Environmental Impact Assessment Review 25 (2005) 431 435

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Editorial

Electronic wastean emerging risk?

In 2004, more than 180 million personal computers (PCs) were sold worldwide. In the
same year, an estimated 100 million obsolete PCs entered waste streams and were either
recycled for the recovery of materials or finally disposed of. A PC may contain up to 4 g
of gold and other valuable materials that can be recovered at a profit, particularly if the
work is done in low-income countries. However, as is the case with almost all present-day
electronic products, a PC also contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, arsenic,
cadmium, selenium, and hexavalent chromium. In many parts of the world, both formal
and informal recycling industries that deal with the rapidly growing streams of Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), or e-waste for short, have emerged.
For the EU15 (the 15 countries constituting the EU before May 2004), the WEEE
generated per capita today is between 4 and 20 kg/a (Widmer et al., in this issue). The
range of uncertainty is mainly due to definitional problems, as it is typical for the entire ewaste topic.
Computers are only one type of WEEE. However, given the trend towards pervasive
computing, which means that more and more everyday commodities will contain
microprocessors in the future, the borderlines between dclassicT electrical equipment (such
as refrigerators) and electronic equipment will become blurred. One can already see today
that more and more objects that used to be considered purely delectricalT are now equipped
with computer chips, and thus have turned into delectronicT objects. Today, more than 98%
of all programmable microprocessors are embedded in commodities that are usually not
perceived as computers (e.g., household appliances and toys). Even more relevant from an
environmental point of view, many commodities that until recently were considered dnonelectricT are now being equipped with microprocessors for extended functionality, or with
radiofrequency identification (RFID) transponders for contactless identification (Hilty et
al. 2005; Oertel et al. 2005).
Both the old (device-like) and new (embedded) types of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are spreading out rapidly, leaping geopolitical borders and
penetrating our everyday lives across traditional categories of basic commodities. Given
these trends in ICT diffusion and application, it is likely that the dissipation of valuable
and toxic materials due to the distribution and disposal of electronics will continue, unless
effective countermeasures are taken. The hope that the continued miniaturization of
electronics, according to the so-called Moores Law and related technological trends, will
0195-9255/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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solve the problem in the long run is neither supported by experience nor by the
expectations explicitly stated by ICT manufacturers.
Experience shows that the miniaturization of devices is usually counteracted by the
growing numbers of devices produced. For instance, the considerable reduction in the
average physical mass of a mobile phone from over 350 g (1990) to about 80 g (2005),
which corresponds to a reduction by a factor of 4.4, was accompanied by an increase in the
number of subscribers, which in turn led to a rise of the total mass flow by a factor of 8.0
(data for Switzerland; Hilty et al. 2005). In every case of miniaturization in digital
electronics thus far, the price per functional unit has fallen and triggered greater demand,
which compensatesor even overcompensatesfor the miniaturization effect in terms of
mass flow. There is no evidence that this rebound effect of miniaturization will no longer
apply if the visions called dpervasive computing,T dubiquitous computing,T or dambient
intelligenceT become real.
Quite the contrary, IBM expects that in the next 510 years, about 1 billion (109)
people will be using more than a trillion (1012) networked objects across the world. This
would mean that there would be an average of 1000 dsmart objectsT per person in the
richer part of the world, each containing a processor and some communication module.
If we assume that the average mass of an electronic component used to make an object
dsmartT is about 10 g and that such a component would be in service for about 1 year,
the resulting per-capita flow of e-waste amounts to 10 kg/a. This value is on the same
order of magnitude as todays e-waste in industrialized countries, as mentioned above.
We can conclude that implementing the dsmart objectsT vision would not render the mass
flows of electronic waste negligible; however, it will certainly change the quality and
manageability of these flows.
Taking other technological visions literally can even lead to dramatic results. One
example is the vision of de-grainsTvery small processors that are envisioned to be used
as dintelligent wall paint,T turning walls into large-scale displays and rooms into distributed
computers. In a study for the Swiss Center for Technology Assessment, it was
hypothetically assumed that this technology would be applied to give every inhabitant
of Western Europe, North America, and Japan one dintelligent room.T Assuming further
that nickel will still be used as a constituent of e-grains, it was estimated that more than
40% of the worlds annual nickel production (1.2 million tonnes in the year 2000) would
be required to produce the wall paint (Hilty et al 2005).
This example shows that the supply of exotic raw materials could become a limiting
factor for future electronics production. The temporary shortage of tantalum that occurred
in 19992001 demonstrated this problem. Only two companies extract tantulum from the
mineral coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Australia. This scarcity
appreciably slowed the growth of the ICT industry (e.g., in the mobile phone and games
console segments) (Horvath 2002).
In the project dThe Future Impact of ICT on Environmental SustainabilityT for the
European Commission, a socio-economic simulation study with a time horizon running up
to 2020 was carried out for three different policy scenarios (Hilty et al. 2004). Even in the
scenario which assumed that environmental regulation would be put into force to
internalize external costs (e.g., accounting for the externalities of extracting and processing
raw materials, supplying energy, and disposing of waste), the total EU15 WEEE mass flow

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increased by a factor of 2.7 (compared to the level of 2000) in the best case and by 4.0 in
the worst case. In the two scenarios without additional environmental regulation, the
WEEE flow increased by a factor of 3.17.0. The large spans between best-case and
worst-case results are due to parameter uncertainties.
Irrespective of the many details that may be debatable, the considerations set out above
suggest that the life cycle of electronics has to be improved significantly if we are to avoid
an accelerated loss of scarce raw materials and emission of toxics into the environment.
When e-waste is disposed of, recycled, or put into a landfill with domestic waste without
any controls, there are predictable negative consequences for the environment and for
human health.
The rapidly increasing WEEE mass flow, combined with the trend towards embedded
electronics, makes WEEE an emerging risk for society. Reinsurance companies use the
term demerging riskT in cases where a high potential for damage has to be assumed, but the
traditional quantification of the risk as the extent of damage weighted by the probability of
occurrence is not or not yet applicable because the type of risk is novel and has evolved
gradually (Spuehler 2003).
This special issue of Environmental Impact Assessment Review is an attempt to collect
the existing knowledge on the emerging risk of growing e-waste streams. Some of the
contributions are outcomes of the first international knowledge management project on the
electronic waste problem, dKnowledge Partnerships in E-Waste Recycling,T funded by the
Swiss State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (seco) and carried out by the Technology and
Society Laboratory at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and
Research (Empa, 2005).
Rolf Widmer and his co-authors first give an overview of the quantities and composition
of e-waste, the hazards, as well as the economic value of discarded electrical and electronic
appliances. They also provide insight into the legislation and approaches being taken to
manage these growing quantities of e-waste, with a special focus on the situation in
transition and developing countries.
Charlotte Hicks, Rolf Dietmar, and Martin Eugster focus on the situation in China,
where a large recycling industry has emerged in the informal sector, processing both
domestic and imported WEEE. They focus on legislative issues in the context of the
environmental, human health, and economic impacts of e-waste recycling.
Martin Streicher-Porte and his co-authors have assessed the management and recycling
of WEEE in the city of Delhi, India. The personal computer was defined as a tracer for
which a model was designed, depicting the life cycle of the PC, from production through
sale and consumptionincluding reuse and refurbishmentto the material recovery in the
mainly informal recycling industry.
Deepali Sinha-Khetrival, Philipp Kraeuchi, and Markus Schwaninger compare the ewaste recycling systems of the informal type, as they have emerged in India, with the
system that has been implemented in Switzerland and discuss their economic, social, and
environmental aspects.

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Mario Schmidt introduces and discusses a methodology for the analysis of WEEE
recycling systems based on a production theory approach. In transformation processes
such as those that occur in production or recycling, this approach makes it possible to
distinguish stringently between the economic revenue from a process, on one hand, and
the economic and ecological expenditures for it, on the other hand. This approach can be
transferred to systems of processes (e.g., recycling networks) in order to determine the
system revenue and system expenditure. With the aid of an example developed jointly
with Hewlett Packard Europe, the paper outlines how this approach can be employed in
the field of e-waste management.
Roland Hischier, Patrick Waeger, and Johannes Gauglhofer pose the question of
whether the recycling of e-waste under the conditions of industrialized countries pays off
in environmental terms. Using the Swiss WEEE take-back and recycling systems as an
example, they show that within the complete recycling chain, the sorting and dismantling
activities of the companies are of minor environmental relevancethe main load is to be
found in the treatment needed to upgrade the products from those processes into
secondary raw materials. When comparing the environmental loads from WEEE recycling
with those due to the baseline scenario (incineration of all WEEE and primary production
of the raw materials), recycling definitely proves to be preferable from an environmental
perspective.
Wolfram Scharnhorst and his co-authors present a life cycle assessment (LCA) study
of mobile phone network components. They assess the relative environmental relevance
of the production, use, and end-of-life phases using the IMPACT2002+ method.
Focusing on the end-of-life treatment options, the authors show that recycling network
materials leads to a reduction in environmental impacts both in the end-of-life phase
itself as well as in terms of the avoided primary production of materials that are
recovered.
Patrick Waeger and his co-authors finally analyse the implications of the disposal and
recycling of packaging materials containing dsmart labelsT for radiofrequency identification (RFID), and discuss the results from the perspective of the precautionary principle.
They argue that a broad application of dsmart labelsT bears the risk of dissipating both toxic
and valuable substances and of disrupting established recycling processes, and show how
these risks can be minimized by precautionary measures.

References
Empa. The ewaste guide; 2005. Available at: www.ewaste.ch; accessed 18.04.2005.
Hilty LM, Wager P, Lehmann M, Hischier R, Ruddy T, Binswanger M. The future impact ICT on
environmental sustainability. Refinement and quantification. Fourth Interim Report; 2004. Institute for
Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), Sevilla, 2004, available at: http://cleantech.jrc.es/pages/
ct8.htm; accessed 18.04.2005.
Hilty LM, Behrendt S, Binswanger M, Bruinink A, Erdmann L, Froehlich J, et al. The precautionary
principle in the information societyeffects of pervasive computing on health and environment. Second revised

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edition. Edited by the Swiss Center for Technology Assessment (TA-SWISS), Bern, Switzerland (TA46e/2005),
and the Scientific Technology Options Assessment at the European Parliament (STOA 125 EN); 2005. available
at: www.ta-swiss.ch; accessed 18.04.2005.
Horvath J. Borne by blood: the otherand often bloodyside of the ddigital revolutionT; 2002. Available at:
www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/12/12860/1.html; accessed 18.04.2005.
Oertel B, Wolk M, Hilty LM, Kohler A. Risks and opportunities of the use of RFID systems. Bonn:
Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik; 2005. Available at: www.bsi.de.
Spuehler J. Emerging Risks; Swiss Re; 2003. Available at: www.swissre.com; accessed 18.04.2005.

Lorenz M. Hilty
Technology and Society Laboratory, Empa,
Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research,
Lerchenfeldstr. 5, CH-9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland
E-mail address: Lorenz.Hilty@empa.ch.
Tel.: +41 71 274 73 45; fax: +41 71 274 78 62.
URL: http://www.empa.ch/tsl.
13 April 2005